Researchers develop interactive tool to track agricultural injuries, strengthen prevention efforts

by Marianne Stein, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Andrew Zinin

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Agriculture is one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. Each year, vehicles, machinery, environmental hazards and other incidents cause thousands of injuries and hundreds of fatalities. A thorough understanding of the main risks is key to preventing accidents and promoting agricultural safety.

A research team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has developed an interactive platform that allows users to obtain customized information about agricultural injuries. The researchers describe their work in an article in the Journal of Agromedicine.

"The project started as a tool for Extension educators. We wanted to develop something they could use to learn more about agricultural injuries in their own communities and to compare different regions. Eventually, we decided to also include search options for researchers, who may have different data demands," said co-author Salah Issa, Illinois Extension specialist and associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois.

The Agricultural Injury Dashboard covers agricultural injuries in five Midwestern states. It contains tracks for researchers and educators to customize their queries according to specific purposes. The dashboard allows users to search a variety of parameters and provides the information as interactive graphs and charts.

"Everything is interactive. If you click on any given year and a certain type of injury, every chart will highlight that specific injury type and provide the age, gender and fatality distribution. These charts work in tandem, which allows you to hone in on the data according to your needs," said lead author Sihan Li. She helped develop the dashboard as a doctoral student in ABE and now continues the work as a visiting Extension outreach associate.

The researchers first conducted a review of existing sources where users can look up agricultural injury information and found they weren't very user-friendly. They set out to develop a tool that was functional, efficient and easy to use.

To populate the dashboard, they used data from the AgInjuryNews database, which categorizes agricultural injuries from news reports across the U.S. and Canada. The researchers included AgInjuryNews data from Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, spanning 2016–2024.

The dataset provides information such as cause and type of injury, location, time and victim demographics. The data also includes codes for the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS) and the Farm and Agricultural Injury Classification (FAIC).

Li and Issa developed the interactive dashboard using Microsoft Power BI, which provides a range of visualization capabilities. They pilot-tested it with different user groups, further refining the tools based on feedback.

While the dashboard was developed in partnership with AgInjuryNews, future updates will be populated by the researchers' own data.

"The University of Illinois database for agricultural injuries is based on news clippings, and we also ask the Illinois Department of Public Health to review our information, so we can add any missing cases. It's probably one of the best datasets for fatal agricultural injuries in the state," Issa said.

While this means the dashboard will be primarily focused on Illinois, Issa said it will be easy for users from other states to adapt it to their purposes by adding their own datasets.

Having access to a resource that provides an overview of agricultural injuries is essential to education and prevention, the researchers said.

"Accidents, especially fatal ones, happen rarely enough that you may not notice a pattern in your own community. Therefore, it's important to stay abreast of what's going on in the wider region. If you see trends of incidents occurring across communities, you can launch various programs to educate farmers and address these issues before they grow bigger," Issa said.

Eventually, the researchers hope to expand the dashboard to capture not just the occurrence of accidents, but also their monetary and human impact on communities.

More information

Sihan Li et al, Design of an Interactive Agricultural Injury Dashboard: Enhancing Data Visualization and Stakeholder Engagement Using AgInjuryNews Data, Journal of Agromedicine (2026). DOI: 10.1080/1059924x.2026.2712970

Clinical categories

Occupational medicinePreventive medicineCommon illnesses & Prevention Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Who's behind this story?

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